Every now and then when I am playing a game I need to pause and go do sth. I usually pause and lock the iPod so the screen dims at once and I save power. Sometimes, I come back and everything looks exactly the way it should, except that the clock in the corner reads "--:--" and controls have an extreme lag, especially to make selections or go back to a previous menu. Even restarting the iPod with Menu+Select doesn't always work. Twice the iPod has actually shut off (or at least the screen turns black) and no amount of button-pressing or charging will turn it back on for ten to fifteen minutes. This happens without any noticeable pattern except that I flipped the Hold switch.
Now that I think about it, this seems to be the only problem I have had since the first occurrence; before that, the device had frozen completely or the screen turned white and gave me an error message and in those cases I simply had to let the battery die and then plug it back in. This has not happened lately.
Can anybody tell me what is happening?